


that chaotic taste of you

by HelloAmHere



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Food Issues, M/M, Makeouts, Sensory Overload, post stormtrooper recovery, slow quiet dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22513621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloAmHere/pseuds/HelloAmHere
Summary: The Resistance had an awful lot of personality for a military organization. They did things like rotate menu items to correspond with people’s planets, and there was a droid that went around and bugged you for a contribution once in a while, and FN had had to remind this droid way too many times that he didn’t know what his planet was.///Finn acclimates. Sort of. Poe helps. Also sort of.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 20
Kudos: 119





	that chaotic taste of you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MediaWhore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MediaWhore/gifts).

> This is a small sw thought experiment loosely placed somewhere after the Force Awakens, but I felt like doing zip of my own research and instead have made it what I wanted. 
> 
> And this fic is also a small gift for MediaWhore; may you fall headfirst into as many homes as you need. I know that you will.

It wasn’t so much that there was anything wrong with the mess hall--no, scratch that, _plenty_ was wrong with the mess hall--it was all dirty and overused and barely hanging together, and without imperial standard sterility, dirt itself was a wrong that rattled like a bad generator, that felt like a scratch on the inside of a viz-mask--but, anyway. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the mess hall. And yet he hated it.

(It was that he was a mess, probably. He was starting to think. He did not have words for this. He had a few words for when you became a mess, physically: get hit too hard too many times and you’re _scrambled egg in a suit_, that was a joke that people conscripted from planets with eggs used to say, once. People? Troopers? People.)

The mess hall was full of definitely-people (they were fighting injustice, after all) during most hours. The Resistance didn’t really work standard shifts. Joining the Resistance had been--hah! Falling into the Resistance had been easy. Finding the mess hall empty of people was hard.

FN took a chance on oh-seventeen-hours, which on this planet was currently a balmy evening. At oh-seventeen the analytic tower in the processing room took advantage from the decrease in power usage and started to grind on the algorithms for the star map tracking. It was incredible technology, feeding in the spy information they’d gotten over the day and using it to project analytics onto the galaxy, tracking and updating First Order ships. And it was loud. Most other people didn’t like that. But FN had been a janitor, so, you know. Trash compactors were also loud.

(Troopers had to be people. Didn’t make it easy to plan missions that eviscerated them.)

FN swiped a tray from the stack that nobody had cleaned very well on the last rotation. It was _fine_. He marched through the stations, which were serve-yourself instead of portioned by bot (also fine). He got a glop of something that represented a planet he’d never heard of, according to the small card stuck next to it. He said hi to somebody he didn’t remember who remembered him, but they were on their way out to a night shift (actually fine).

The Resistance had an awful lot of personality for a military organization. They did things like rotate menu items to correspond with people’s planets, and there was a droid that went around and bugged you for a contribution once in a while, and FN had had to remind this droid way too many times that he didn’t know what his planet was.

If they overheard such statements, other Resistance people took a very careful breath in, and FN felt more different than he had ever wanted to feel, even though feeling different was itself a novel sensation, and one that he appreciated was probably necessary, in the grand scheme of things.

(Troopers never felt different. This was not a very people-like attribute, FN had gleaned.)

Fighting for the Resistance had been, well, if not easy, at the very least necessary. But living with the Resistance? Now he was supposed to be recovering, and this was a more difficult thing to figure out. Recovering from….everything (Rey, lightsabers, falling through space on his head, deciding he knew how to get into a planet-size gun and making it up as he went along, living outside of a Trooper shell for the longest running streak of days so far in his life, living through the realization that it hadn’t been much of a life).

FN made an exploratory poke at the food on his plate. Something in it sank, like a helmet barricade deflating. It was unappealing. FN stared at it, and the food became somehow even less appealing. FN sighed, loudly. The food said nothing. The analysis tower hummed, and rattled, rotating stars in its algorithmic head. FN wished for such a linear cognition.

(Troopers thought linearly, one step in front of the other for a life cycle, until they were replaced by the next Trooper. FN had not been particularly good at this, not a frontline, rise-in-the-ranks kind of Trooper, and it had protected him from the worst things but when he had been a Trooper this had given him a kind of jittery, frizzing energy underneath everything that he ever did, always wondering if he was going to step outside the line because he kept not seeing it. Funny to think that he had not stepped over the line, but _ran_ over it, flung, bolted, taken a grappling hook to the line itself and hurtled it back the distance of a cruiser. He had _smoked_ the line.)

FN found himself pondering on the thing that he had been pondering for the last day, which was that he didn’t know what recovering really meant. Recovery was surprisingly more difficult than it had been to leap into the action. Fighting with Rey, he had cared so fiercely it had burned through him like a fire that didn’t leave a mark. Sitting around in the Resistance mess hall? Dreadful. Far preferable to fall out of spaceships.

“Finn! Anybody sitting here?” Poe asked, already sitting down in the chair across from him. Poe's voice was always an exclamation point even when he sounded tired.

“Make yourself at home,” FN said, because Poe was going to anyway.

“Trying, as much as anybody ever can make a home on a planet that decides to cycle through five seasons in a week,” Poe said. He looked extremely tired, and FN wondered what he’d been doing during the last five seasons (days). He was wearing a red shirt that buttoned at the cuffs in an unusual way and FN’s eyes caught on the details. Poe had a lot of personality, too.

“Layers,” FN suggested, with his mouth half-full of a planet he’d never heard of. It was hard to swallow when things had flavor. Poe laughed out loud at that, which made FN feel very warm on the inside even though Poe laughed so easily, and for everybody.

“I wish we could live somewhere a little more stable for at least a few months, though, it’s a bitch to pilot back and forth out there through the belt around this place,” Poe said. He ate like a tauntaun. Steady grazing right through the tray. “I nearly hit a stray meteor and then I thought I’d knock a meteor shower onto the base and we’d all perish. It was super great for my stress levels.”

“First Order information signatures have a hard time penetrating ringbelt fields,” FN said, “Resistance decryption is better. It’s all that Alderaan oldtech, I think. They were a diplomatic place. They thought a lot about getting messages through, clearly.”

“Is that right?” Poe asked. He seemed genuinely surprised. FN had thought it was an obvious guess and as such, must be broadly understood. General Organa really did like her voice to be heard. “So they didn’t just base us all back here to give the pilots a migraine and dodge First Order TIEs?”

“I think we probably chose messages over maneuverability,” FN ventured. “Almost as much as TIE fighters like outmaneuvering the ‘Wings.”

This was a contentious joke and something that FN was experimenting with, because after all, he was one of them but he had at a certain point been one of _them_. It left him with certain small strange jokes and allegiances. Not to the Order--never to the Order, which FN hated in the marrow of his soul as much as he loved, say, getting to wake up in the mornings and wonder about strange planets for the first time in his life. But he couldn’t undo a lifetime of appreciating the engineering details of First Order ships, not Rebel scrappers. It was fine (was it?).

Poe laughed again, real and loud and so warm. “There's just something about you,” he said.

“What?” FN said, blankly, more a reaction than a question. The noise from the analytic tower might have distorted the words. FN had a job and a place and _friends_ (that was cool) and non-uniform clothes (still getting used to that), but sometimes he blanked out in the middle of conversations that weren’t with people like Rey (no one could stop listening to Rey), and sometimes he missed things they said. Sometimes he still felt like a loose ball bearing rolling around a laser barrel, bouncing off everything.

“I said, love this stew,” Poe said. “You should try it.” He scooped a brown piece of indeterminate substance that smelled too strongly onto the side of FN’s plate. FN had never had anybody do this before.

He looked down at the substance, which was horrible, and up at Poe, who was not horrible at all.

“Thanks,” he said, another experiment.

***

Rey was out there in the dark and FN missed her (novel! He had missed showers and the quiet work of a remote station, once he had been transferred to Starkiller, he had missed the old Trooper shells that had fit better in the legs than the stupid ones that Starkiller base had put them in. He had not started missing people until he ran away).

FN pressed his forehead to the cool glass of the viewing port at the top of the observation level and sent his heart into the stars. No one in the universe felt like Rey but FN felt like somehow, even if only secretly, she was the most like him out of everyone here. Except that she was important, finding her destiny, and he knew that.

“You have a destiny just as much as anyone,” she had said, gentle but clear, when they’d clasped hands before she left.

“Who’s gonna hold your lightsabers when you drop them if you leave,” he’d said, a joke (a quickly-developing skill).

“I’ll just have to hold on,” she’d said.

“Or get faster at picking it back up,” he’d suggested.

(Missing people wasn’t a joke. FN didn’t miss anybody--any Trooper--from Starkiller but he did...he did think about the fact that they had all been people, and none of them had ever acted like it, and he wondered how many he might have taken with him, if he had ever thought about it.)

Rey had ducked her chin and squeezed his hands and he’d felt the smallness and the strength of her, transcendent. Rey was too busy staring at the universe to ever think of herself as special. That was ok, he could recognize it for her.

“Destiny,” she’d said, sideways scavenger grin like, _look at us!_

Rey had Force powers, which were magic, so far be it from FN to doubt her. But he didn’t know what that destiny could possibly be. He was part of the Resistance and yet also, deep inside of him there was a hidden worry that having broken free from one machine, he could never, ever be part of another.

_First friend,_ he sent out into the stars, _fly safe._

***

Poe sat down on FN’s side of the table the next evening and FN jumped a little. It was unconscionable in a soldier.

(Of course, this was one of the reasons he’d been a janitor, wasn’t it)

“Sorry, hi,” Poe said brightly. He was wearing a jacket today because today it was winter, until tomorrow, when it would be scorching. The base was liveable in all temperatures but it was hardly comfortable. On the battle cruisers, which hung in deep space and never docked but instead had other things dock to them, everything had been very cold all the time. But the good uniforms had double-layering and dense space-wear material that temperature regulated with some mysterious precision. FN had not had access to these things but he saw them go by, on their way to the laundry bots.

“Hi,” FN said. He had gone for oh-seventeen again and the analytics tower was indeed loud. There were two mechanics eating cake in the corner but otherwise they were alone. Most of the Resistance on this base were the officers and the important people, and then FN, who was by default someone important now after falling into Rey and being run through with a lightsaber and...things FN had a hard time calling real, really.

“I was thinking about what you said about information signatures,” Poe said excitedly. “It was kind of brilliant, you know.”

“Pssh, it was obvious,” FN made a noise at his plate of cake. He had tried it, but it was an abomination. Apparently its main ingredient was something called sugar. Troopers didn’t get sugar that he knew of. Troopers were fed a steady diet of precision-personalized slurry. He didn’t know how anybody ate stuff like this for dinner.

“Not to me. My problem is always that I’m thinking about the physicality,” Poe said with his mouth full. He hadn’t taken quite as much cake as FN and FN wondered if this was a cultural norm he was unfamiliar with vis-a-vis sugar.

“I’m great at thinking about ships in space, and jump patterns and the velocity lost between different layouts, and how we can be the guerilla badass force that we are,”

“You’re great at stuff, got it,” FN said to make Poe laugh again. He did.

FN stabbed into a piece of food and looked at it. FN wondered what Poe (what normal people) saw in it.

“What else could you break down as the strategic differences between the First Order and the Resistance?” Poe asked sincerely. Today he was wearing something blue that brought out the dark contrast of his eyebrows and eyelashes, and his uniform pants had engine grease on them which did not diminish the picture. FN looked back down at the cake and found its colors even more garish in comparison. His stomach turned.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” he said carefully. He was, after all, on the inside only a janitor, and on the outside, surely that was as obvious as anything else.

“I don’t really, you know I was never trained for that kind of--” FN said. After everything--after Rey and the magic and the lasers in the snow--the General had spent far less time with him than with Rey but she had said _you'll always have a home here_ and Rey and he had caught each other's eyes across the room and FN had felt, glimmering and glowing inside, that a new life was opening up. But then Rey had gone on to destiny and new life had meant FN sitting in on to meetings with generals and very little to say himself, and during each meeting he reminded himself to not blurt out with, _can I actually not have my own room, it feels so quiet._

(Troopers, not being people but being bodies, had bunked together in efficient units of quiet bodies, but there was always noise, where there were bodies.)

And then FN had been quiet and strange for too long but then Poe said, “I'm sorry, don’t worry about it. I didn’t mean to be pushy.”

“I wasn’t worried,” FN said.

“Sure,” Poe said, and nudged FN’s knee with his knee under the table. And then Poe caught sight of his plate, or several plates, because FN had taken the cake on one plate and the other dish on the other plate, because several unfamiliar planets in a row was slightly more bearable than mixing unfamiliar planets together and trying to swallow them at the same time. He had four plates in front of him, diligently trying and failing at every menu item.

"Most people don't put icing on potatoes," Poe said, but nonjudgmentally, like he was making an experiment of his own.

"Huh," FN said, poking it with a fork, affecting an air of superiority (Poe liked jokes). Icing was some kind of sauce, wasn't it?

“Finn,” Poe said, with narrowed eyes, which was particularly evident because everything about his face was striking in all light, “Do you ever eat any of this?”

“Do I what?” FN asked. Of course he ate. His stomach turned over again, limp and unhappy. He was pretty sure that he ate. As much as anyone could eat, here.

Poe made a gesture at their plates. Besides the cake there was something called corn hash, or porn mash, FN didn’t know. Poe’s plate was scraped clean and FN’s was a blur of hash-mash, mashed into a paste. He’d been working on a small landing pad in the middle.

“It’s weird, all this stuff,” FN offered, conspiratorially.

“Food?” Poe asked.

“Yes, exactly,” FN said, relieved that somebody understood.

“Sure,” Poe agreed. He was so agreeable. He narrowed his eyes more though. FN transferred his gaze to the ceiling.

“First Order Moon bases are a good target for small runs,” FN suggested, letting his thoughts spool out just a little bit (hi, Rey, wherever you are). “This was something I was thinking about as a distraction from this horrible cake thing.”

“_Moon_ bases? We never thought those were a good use of time,” Poe said. “I mean, they’re small.”

“Yes and no,” FN acknowledged. “Here’s the thing, they’re, boring. Far down the supply chain. They’re not heavily fortified but they do stock a lot of resources there. Not armaments, but basic materials. And the people who work there are...they’re treated very badly. Most of them come from the planetside of the moon, the moon base becomes kind of like a prison, but the Troopers are on the planet keeping the population scared. So the moon bases, they’re sort of a vulnerability. The people there just get passed over every time there’s a rebellion on a planet. They never get freed, not like prisoners get freed, or colonies. They’re indentured labor, and they don’t--people forget about them. But they’re still people. It could be valuable for the Resistance to smash and grab and good morale for the outlying systems to remember that we exist while Rey is, whatever Rey’s doing.”

Poe nodded. “That’s a very interesting thought,” he said.

***

The Resistance freed an indentured servitude plant on a far away jungle moon, and a planet full of aunts and uncles and parents cheered even though they were themselves not freed, and FN grinned at the ceiling over his bunk and thought about all those people. People had to all be people, even the bad ones, otherwise what was the point?

(Here was a difference between the machine of the First Order and the machine of the Resistance, besides the obvious_ less genocide_ bit: the Resistance could celebrate a victory just as hard when it was a _fuck you_ kind of victory instead of a _military triumph_ kind of victory. The First Order hadn’t had that kind of personality.)

“Finn! I missed your analysis about everything we’re doing wrong these last few weeks,” Poe said when he ran into FN in the hallway.

“I missed hearing the engine crews talk about what a pain in the ass it is every time you fly a new ship in a new, deranged way,” FN shot back. Poe grinned. Success.

Poe looked him up and down. FN shifted from one foot to the next. Poe was the kind of person that everyone else looked at, and FN was in pajamas. Pajamas were a concept he had recently been introduced to by a pilot who was not as funny as Poe, but nice. FN had worn them to sit through the General’s meeting and not really listen to it, staring instead at the droids who were playing a game of backat-tono in the corner and how nobody had minded this at all.

(Droids were not allowed to have personalities in the First Order but now, FN wondered about it.)

“Do you still do the oh-seventeen shift in the mess hall?” Poe asked. “I’ll be here on base for a little bit after that last mission. We’ve got some real logistics to work out, targeting these bases. Apparently--” he made a self-deprecating, and slightly sad hand gesture, “--apparently being _leadership_ means you don’t get to blast things out of the vacuum all the time.”

“We all make sacrifices,” FN said. Poe grinned at him, the corners of his eyes crinkled happily.

“Well then I gotta get some help on the brain parts, you know. All the concussions. We could make it...a standing thing?”

It took FN a second to realize Poe was talking about him when he said _brain parts_, and Poe nudged him with his elbow. It was a narrow hallway. Poe smelled like someone who had been away on a mission, even despite the long soak in the cleanser and the fresh curl in his still-damp hair. They were near each other in height, although FN was a little bit taller, having been a Trooper (although not a very good Trooper). Poe’s hair made up the difference. FN felt his heart rate increase for no discernible reason.

“Analysis? It’s your funeral, I’m going to tell you about what I really think about Y-Wings, a lot,” FN said, better to be frank because it was all he could be. “Oh-seventeen.”

“I better dress up for it then,” Poe said, and he squeezed FN’s shoulder as he stepped away down the hall, so quickly and smoothly that FN didn’t really realize he had done it and was left with the phantom pull of warmth from an invisible hand.

“Hey, are those flannel?” Poe shouted over his shoulder. FN had no idea what flannel was. Poe was already gone, sucked into the whirl of Resistance pilots churning and chattering and settling in for endless debriefings, post-mission. He caught a flash of the General’s small, but limitlessly powerful frame, everyone stepping around her like water rippling around a stone. He smiled.

After the end of Starkiller base, FN had been presented with a few career options by the Resistance command already, including pilot, or espionage, or finding a nice analytics role with a screen in front of him all day. There hadn’t exactly been a role for friend.

_Dinner_, FN thought. The concept was soft, like flannel.

***

Dinner had not been a concept in the First Order. Mealtimes for the low-down people had had numbers more than names. Personalized slurry came in the same kind of tin delivered by the same tray-bot every time, so even if it had been different (occasionally re-constituted when the First Order shifted supply to another agricultural planet, or perhaps when the First Order decided that your particular set of number-labeled not-people belonged a rung further down on the nutrient ladder), it was difficult to develop an opinion about it.

The Resistance was, on the other hand, color and scrap and noise and General Organa letting out a surprisingly loud laugh when a quippy pilot made an off-color joke in the middle of a briefing--the General seemed to have a thing for quippy pilots. FN could understand how Poe fit in. Of course the Resistance had dinner, and of course it changed every night. FN wanted to love it more than he did--or, he did love it, but he wanted it to feel more comfortable than it did. And it didn’t, and he had hated it.

FN loved the people (people-people) of the Resistance with his whole entire heart, and he knew he did not always understand them, and he was grateful to be here more than anything he’d ever had to be grateful for, and every morning was a wide-eyed wonder, and yet. The always-changing rotating menu thing was just terrible. _Fuck_ dinner.

***

“I don’t think that’s true,” Poe said, clearly trying to sound diplomatic and clearly failing. FN was laughing into his napkin and not disguising it.

“It’s true! You’re running on old projections,” he said.

“These are New Republic standard specs,” Poe protested.

“Which were always wrong, from the beginning, which was an Imperial secret, and now a First Order secret, although not really much of a secret, because I know about it,” FN said.

“Finn, you’re killing me, buddy,” Poe said, admitting defeat and slumping back into his chair with his eyes half-closed. FN smiled over the napkin at him. "So much bad news out of such a nice face."

FN felt his ears go hot.

“Should have analyzed those cruiser core samples when you brought one of them down just before we escaped together,” he pointed out, helpfully.

“For fuck’s sake,” Poe said, “We were barely hanging on back then. ‘Analyze the core samples!’ Oh ok! I’ll just ship a destroyer core sample off to my internal research lab world, should I!"

“Which one,” FN said, “First Order has _three_ planets with their internal thermodynamics entirely devoted to processing such analyses.”

Poe rolled his napkin into a ball and threw it at FN’s head. FN didn’t even bother to duck. He probably deserved it.

“Now you know,” he said, placatingly.

“Now we fucking know,” Poe said, grinning. He’d already sent a comm to the General about it, FN guessed, in the time FN had taken to look down at the table and laugh a little bit more. Poe had some kind of direct line into command that the pilots got, ready to scramble. He seemed to mostly use it to bother people with the small bits and pieces of information that he thought were relevant. It was in no way organized, nothing like report chains and information hierarchies that FN imagined took place between commanders and analysts and pilots and everybody. But here, they were all kind of everybody.

“Hey, I brought you something tonight,” Poe said. He pulled a metal canister out of his pocket and put it on the table and then he winked at FN. FN looked at it.

“Is this….another dinner thing?” he asked, with trepidation. Tonight’s meal had been from a planet that apparently maintained a salt base underneath everything it produced. FN had already gone through three units of water, and his plate was barely touched. His stomach felt empty. He could use a nice, indistinguishable slurry.

“It’s a trick, of course,” Poe said. “Everything with me is always a trick, be sure to remember that.” He took the canister and opened its small lid. From within, a dark green substance sparkled. He sprinkled it over their two plates, which were so close on the table that they were touching.

FN took a bite, because otherwise it would be rude. The salt was nearly undetectable, faded to a pleasant echo. He looked at Poe with awe, and Poe was smiling a different smile this time, soft in the corners of his eyes and closed-mouthed. It was gentle and lovely. “When you travel to a lot of corners of the Galaxy you learn to bring your own neutralizers."

FN leaned closer to Poe, even though they were already close. “Thanks,” he said with his mouth full, and then in a rush, “I don’t know how everybody eats such different stuff all the time.”

(Troopers, even noncombat Troopers, shared a lot of close quarters and showers and bunks. But it wasn't the same as touch by choice.)

“Yeah it’s weird,” Poe said, leaning back. “But some people like it.” His shoulder was warm and solid. He smelled like something but it wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t neutral. Nothing about Poe was. FN wanted to lean even closer, which was ridiculous, impossible, and yet possible, because who cared? Who was here? He experimented. He could feel Poe smiling at his side.

“Do they,” FN complained into the table, and Poe laughed again.

“I can give you some best guesses about how wrong you are on the interior schematics of the new destroyers,” FN said, pessimistically, “But you could also just auto-scramble the aiming devices to a margin of ‘extremely off’ and you’d probably be just as close.”

“I’d trust your evil guesses over an algorithm, any day,” Poe said, leaning away to pull out his tablet and look over blueprints of cruisers (what a bad sight, FN had to close his eyes for a second).

After a minute where FN cautiously tried more of the salt-neutralized food, Poe let his hand rest on the table to close to FN’s elbow that his knuckles kept grazing FN’s arm. It was featherlight but not bothersome, like the clasp of a well-fit holo shield in the way that it lent a small, pervasive warmth to FN’s elbow. The warmth was small but persistent, sinking into the bone, traveling up the veins, and finding his heart.

***

Poe brought a metal canister and set it between them on the table and ignored it for forty minutes while FN got every complaint he had about Resistance combat drills out of his system.

“I thought you hated your morning Trooper physical conditioning,” Poe said, not smiling and yet FN had the distinct impression that he wanted to be. FN narrowed his eyes at Poe.

“It’s about muscle memory though,” he argued, using his hands wildly. “The Resistance is full of people from, from, every corner of the galaxy, everyone has a different convention, I think the ocean people we just brought in make decisions with a _song_\--”

“It’s beautiful, I’ve heard it,” Poe said.

“We need _some kind of uniformity_,” FN said, exasperated, “That’s why they put us all in shells.”

“What?” Poe asked, astonished. Now he really was smiling and FN didn’t really know why because this was a boring thing, troop training and communication.

“The white armor. Shells. Whatever. We just need everybody to know how to take orders at the same time, and not in fifty different cultural modalities,” FN said, grumpily. “Doesn’t mean I want to go back to a shell.”

“Fair enough,” Poe said graciously. Poe was unpacking the metal canister. Steam rose from the middle of it. “This is a kind of bread that I picked up on the last run to the supply route,” he said casually. “It’s from the outer rim and it’s dense, but bland. Some people hate it. Goes with everything, they say.”

“Bread?” FN asked, “What’s bread?”

Poe blinked at him. He was sitting across from FN this night and FN didn’t like it, so FN got up and switched sides and sat down and bumped shoulders with Poe. Poe stilled, and then bumped back.

“Um, I don’t know how to explain that, probably any more than you know how to explain missing the weapons drills that you grew up doing every single day of your life,” Poe said. FN had missed and been thinking about that small steady warmth from Poe’s knuckles. He was glad to feel Poe close again.

FN broke off a piece of the strange material. It smelled vaguely appealing and yet nonthreatening. FN was very intrigued. He took a piece and it was soft between his fingers, but a little stretchy.

“I don’t want to miss anything about it,” FN said into the bread. It was _amazing_. It was so _bland_.

“You’re allowed to miss it,” Poe said softly. “I miss stupid shit all the time. Even bad shit, if you were used to it, you could miss it.”

FN swallowed an enormous bite and took another. Poe nudged the whole canister toward him. He was sitting so close that FN could feel the heat from his thigh. Poe was nothing like bland and yet he, too, was so pleasant.

(Missing things, FN thought, was very _people_.)

“Think about doing morning drills,” FN said, “Just think about it a little.”

“We could have everybody do the drills while singing,” Poe said. FN made a face into the bread but it was kind of spoiled by the happiness of that idea.

(Bread was incredible. It was warm, mildly flavored, and did not feel like an attack on the inside of his mouth. FN talked himself out of proposing that they rain bread down on Trooper training bases just to see what would happen.)

***

More novel ideas: there was food in this galaxy that did not suck, and Poe kept bringing it to the mess hall. Poe sat on FN’s side of the table by default, and FN leaned into him while they talked, and Poe felt like something that FN didn’t know how to describe. A frame, a holding, the time that FN had found an incomplete maintenance shaft in Starkiller base that had overlooked a battery of lights running down a vast drop, and he had sat on it during his rare moments of freedom and imagined they were stars.

“Why doesn’t every planet just do bread,” FN demanded. It was oh-eighteen and his head was somewhere near Poe’s shoulder. Poe was sketching a hairbrained idea to leave fuel reservoirs in the belt so that pilots could do longer journeys out. FN had already told him it was a terrible idea, so he had relieved himself of duty and was meditating, a thing that Rey had told him about before she left.

“I mean, some people like spice, and complicated flavors, and all kinds of things," Poe said. His fingers were clever on the table. FN found himself looking at them and wondering where Poe might have gone if he hadn't shot himself into the stars.

"Those people could just have a different kind of bread," FN said stubbornly. He felt resolved in this especially because Poe had brought _him_ a different kind of bread tonight, twisted and golden yellow on the outside and just the faintest mild sweet among the stretchy fibers. _Thought sugar could get a second chance,_ Poe said.

“You’re very opinionated,” Poe said.

“When I’m right,” FN said.

“Well we’re all lucky for that,” Poe said. “I’m lucky, since you saved me.”

FN flushed down his neck and made a noise that he hoped sounded like no, or something of that sort. A lot of stuff had happened since he and Poe first met but the moment they’d first met was always going to be branded in FN’s mind. They had both been dirty, desperate, half-alive, streaked in sweat and swinging from near-death to near-death, and yet they had gotten into a ship together and laughed.

(_This_, FN had thought to himself, because he had been spending the few seconds he had had since running over the line, the seconds not spent not-dying, in wondering why he was doing it at all. _Because things could feel like this_.)

“I had a bunch of thoughts about the efficiency of the engines, and I thought, these are probably crazy ideas. I bet Poe would like them,” FN said.

“Of course you did,” Poe said, but he’d swiveled around on the mess hall bench and his face looked happy and expectant. His motion had made FN fall a little bit off Poe’s shoulder and closer into him.

“Whoops,” Poe said, catching him with gentle, clever fingers. It felt like something that FN had not yet been told a word for. He didn’t want to move away but he did. “Tell me about it,”

“Which thought though?” FN asked. He’d left a hand near Poe’s thigh on the mess hall bench and Poe wasn’t moving away from it so he leeched Poe’s warmth, fingertips to the side of his thigh.

“Tell me all of it,” Poe said, looking even happier.

(Dinner was, somehow, the best part of FN’s day.)

***

Oh-seventeen came and went, but Poe was nowhere. FN had been waiting on a new kind of bread that Poe had mentioned the previous night, it had something on top of it that were a kind of mild black seeds, and Poe had promised him that it would be a good way to start to think about texture in food. FN had argued for the benefits of reducing all food to the same texture, but Poe had merely laughed and taken a hand to the side of FN’s face in an affectionate gesture, and then pulled it back, startled and quickly, like he hadn’t meant to. FN was thinking about it, and thinking about the possibility that Poe had gotten caught up in trying to weld two engines into the one engine space of his personal X-wing.

It was twenty minutes past oh-seventeen and FN was hungry, for food and for Poe. So he got up, even though the mess hall was pleasantly empty and the analytics tower was loud.

FN followed the string of pilots and his own strange, gut-heart sense that seemed to tell him where Poe was at all times these days. It wasn’t just unusual for Poe to miss dinner--it was novel. Poe hadn’t missed dinner for the past month entirely. FN was thinking about this when he found himself pulled up short by the sight of the General.

She was leaning against a console in the mission room, because even Generals get tired. Poe was facing her, arms folded over his chest, and his dark eyebrows in a frown. And FN would have walked into the room and out of the blue shadow of the low-energy setting lights, but he had heard his name. It was still new enough that it made him stop.

“Finn hasn’t yet begun to say anything in our meetings, and we are not here simply to wait, and rest, and not plan for a future of action,” the General said, not critically and kindly, but not like something that would brook disagreement. The General was always kind, even when she was running you through with an analysis that left no room for your own heart.

“That doesn’t mean he isn’t contributing,” Poe argued. It had the familiar sound of an argument long going. “You’ve seen the quality of the strategy I’ve brought back.”

These words settled in FN’s stomach with an acid ting, and he hadn’t untangled why when the General was speaking again.

“I know this, and I do not doubt you, but I’m doubtful of the momentum of it all. You know better than anyone how important it is.”

Poe sighed, a sigh that FN could recognize, his fire-quick impatience when he had a vision.

“Finn hates the meetings,” Poe said to the General, “It’s better if I keep having dinner with him. That’s why you suggested it in the first place, isn’t it?”

FN jolted back from the doorway. They both turned, but he didn’t care.

He felt sick to his stomach, feelings that he didn’t really have a name for, twisting, embarrassed, stupid. He’d felt stupid before, but never like this, never about a person. He didn’t even know what was wrong. Probably, he was wrong. He’d only had one real friend before, and it wasn’t realistic to expect this one to work out as well as the first one had.

“Finn,” Poe called out, looking stricken.

“I thought we were friends. But I should have listened. Everything with you is a trick,” FN said, and turned his back on the room, Poe, even the General, and ran.  
  


***

  
“Finn,” Poe yelled. FN didn’t stop walking down the hallway. It was stupid to yell in a small hallway, unnecessary. He was going to find the empty mess hall and find his own meals. He was going to take this unnecessary, novel, stupid thing (feelings??) back to his unnecessary, novel, stupid empty room and he was going to deal with it. He didn’t even know why he was so upset.

(Troopers didn’t get upset. This had been one of the drills. FN had failed it, quite a lot.)

Poe caught the back of his arm and FN flailed away from it.

“Stop it,” he said.

“No,” Poe said, crowding him up against the wall. Poe was shorter than he was but that didn’t make it less effective, not with his flashing eyes and soft, insistent hands on FN’s jacket, which was Poe’s, which was terrible.

“I’m not upset,” FN said.

“You sure look upset,” Poe said.

“Well I’m not,” FN said. Poe was still grabbing him. FN made to shake him off, and Poe gritted his teeth and shook his head.

“You walked in at the wrong--” Poe said. FN interrupted him.

“I can fight with you, and us, and give my blood to the Resistance, and learn to eat cake,” FN said, pausing long enough to make a horrible face, and Poe looked dangerously close to laughing about it, so FN jabbed him with a finger on his stupid jacket (another one, a worse jacket than the one FN was wearing), “I can join you. Every day. But it’s an awful lot to ask me to do that and then--then--”

“Then what?” Poe said, gentle and not gentle, in his face, smelling like an engine room and the mess hall and planets that FN had never even dreamed of.

“Then act like you need to trick me into liking you, for me to help you,” FN said. “And bring me _bread_ because it was just _orders_! You should’ve just told me it was orders!” He didn’t know why this mattered and why it was so upsetting.

(It was because of this: everything in the First Order had been about orders, after all, and the twisting feeling that maybe this was too, that maybe his own small carved-out and tentative new things were also still just part of somebody’s orders, he couldn’t bear that. Maybe he had been wrong to think it would be different here. It cut through him like a saber, the possibility of it, the feeling that people might not be people, just one kind of soldier or another, and he was a loose ball bearing rolling around a machine again, he was--)

"I thought we were friends," FN said sadly.

Poe shook him, and FN snapped back to the hallway, the close warmth of Poe. It leeched all over him, through his clothes and into his cavernous chest with all of its aching questions, it filled him up inside. It was irrational and unscientific and marvelous that Poe could do this. Poe’s face was both gentle and exasperated. “I’m not eating dinner with you because the General told me to,” he said, loudly. “Are you kidding?”

FN blinked at him. “No,” he said cautiously, “I’m not kidding.”

Poe smoothed down the front of the material of FN’s shirt, but didn’t let him go. It was a strange gesture and FN felt hot all up his stomach and didn’t know what that meant, like swallowing warm bread.

“It’s exactly the opposite. I got you to help me, because I wanted to trick you into liking me,” Poe said, and as FN was grabbing his forearms, thumbs slipping away against the worn sleeve, Poe leaned in and kissed him.

FN knew: what it felt to fall through a starship, what it felt like to steal a TIE fighter, what it felt to get knocked down by a stranger and have them turn out to be your first friend, what it felt like to lie your way into the cause, what it felt to decide you could disarm a bomb the size of a planet with the help of an invisible magic that your first friend told you about, and also, the taste of the first new food you ever really liked.

It turned out that all of these were helpful in kissing. Kissing Poe was--explosions and falling and grabbing someone’s hand and running without a thought and texture and warmth and closeness and something in his chest clicking in, _oh_. Poe was caught up against him because FN was pulling him in.

“I’m not tricking you,” Poe whispered against his mouth, “I’m sorry that I did at first. But I came up with it, really. I wanted to spend more time with you, and the General wanted more of you, but neither of us knew how to get it. I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” FN said, uneasy, but occupied with the catch of Poe’s breath against his mouth, the tender startle of what his own mouth felt like under someone else’s, and the growing sense inside of his chest that the warmth was spilling, dripping, filling up everywhere.

(Everyone was a person. Everyone, everyone, everyone. Was that the point of kissing? FN gasped into it, the living breath of another person, the heartbeat underneath his palms, the real real realness of the fact that they were people. He was never going to be able to forget it.)

“Ok,” FN said, “I believe you.”

“Thank fuck,” Poe said, sounding just as exasperated, but kissing him again. Poe clearly felt about kissing the way that FN had felt about leaning his shoulder into Poe, but like everything, Poe was far more willing to express it. Like he could never get enough, like FN was something he desperately wanted but something he wanted to be desperately careful with, at the same time. FN was no better. FN discovered he was holding onto Poe like he was a life support mask.

(If everyone was a person, that had to include him.)

“I’ve, never done that before,” FN said, when it turned out that he still needed to breathe despite never wanting to stop kissing. Poe had a hand on his shoulder, fingertips at his neck. FN had never been touched this way and it was novel, wonderful, distracting.

“Oh, with a guy, I figured. I thought maybe, maybe that was the issue--” Poe started, softly, but FN interrupted.

“Just, at all,” he clarified. Poe made an absolutely untranslatable face. He made to flail back, but FN was having none of this because so many pieces had clicked into place, and once he knew things, he knew. Like jumping ship. Like losing the shell. Like finding out that friends were a thing you should have and planets were a thing you should taste.

“I’m part of the Resistance,” FN said against Poe’s ear, because it was true even if he was a weird part, even if he couldn’t eat what they ate or think how they thought, even if he wanted to do his thinking in the mess hall instead of the mission room.

“Lucky for us,” Poe said, pulling at him with clever, greedy, eager fingers. “Damn lucky for us.”

“Lucky for me,” FN said strongly. He was now leaning into the wall and smiling at Poe, grinning even, kiss-drunk and still kind of hungry and a little bit overwhelmed but good. He had complaints about ships and thoughts about logistics and lots of things to contribute, if Poe could keep the two of them wrapped together like this. “As long as you bring me the stuff I can eat.”

“Of course I’m bringing it,” Poe said, “We are friends,” and FN felt so happy. Poe’s face was so close to his own it wasn’t in focus. He could still see the hesitation in Poe’s eyes, the quick way that he swallowed, and feel his breathing under the palms of FN’s hands. “But I was also thinking, we could be more.”

“I don’t know what that means. But let’s do it. Let’s do it a lot,” FN suggested, and Poe threw back his head and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, all joy and starbursting and reckless pilot. FN didn’t know what he was getting himself into but he was ready to jump. Poe tugged FN backward down the hall, and FN held onto his hand, and followed.  
  


***

  
Later--later--much later--

FN lay in Poe’s bed staring at the bright lights of the stars reflected on the mirror display on the ceiling. Poe was lying on his side, exhausted but happy, nearing the border of sleep despite his clear determination to stay awake as long as possible. FN had forgotten that Poe had just come back from a mission, he forgot sometimes that not everybody lived like a former Trooper, embedded in physical training since childhood. But he could learn more about it. Every day was learning about someone else’s universe.

“You’ll have to tell me about that,” FN said. He was touching Poe in so many places and it occupied much of his brain.

(A novel idea: there were many kinds of touch that FN had never heard about, but always wanted, and now he could figure them all out, a very nice experiment, he had things to say, he had findings of his own to report back, and people wanted to hear it, other people, different from him, but still good.)

“What?” Poe asked, groggy and half-asleep. FN ran his fingers through Poe’s hair, smiling even though the stars couldn’t appreciate it.

“Childhood,” he said.

“Oh, Finn,” Poe breathed onto his shoulder and into his neck. And he kissed him again. He pushed FN into the bed, dense and close and sweet, Poe’s palms skating up the sides of his body, his hair all over the place, tickling FN’s jaw and filling his mouth. FN pulled him back even harder, even closer.

And as FN was becoming more of an expert in these things he had time to think about the way that Poe said the Resistance version of his name: pause in the middle, the name he still thought about like he thought about the Resistance itself--a thing he’d fallen into, a thing uncertain, a thing held together by belief. But what else was there? Belief, sitting down for dinner every night, planets you thought you’d never see. But when had his past determined anything about his future? One day he could decide, _today I will see a strange planet. Today, Finn will get to be a person._

“Tell me about it all,” Finn said.


End file.
